The third issue of Penumbra, the acclaimed Hippocampus Press annual magazine of weird fiction, poetry, and criticism, features provocative stories from both veterans and novices. Steven Woodworth sets his tale in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, while Darrell Schweitzer and Geoffrey Reiter evoke the terror of the rural American landscape. Harley Carnell takes us to working-class England, Carl E. Reed to the Chicago underworld. Other, briefer tales by Manuel Arenas, Garrett Boatman, Scott J. Couturier, and Barry Yedvobnick are no less powerful.

Among the critical essays in the issue, James Goho writes a profound analysis of the work of the late British writer Joel Lane. Cesar Guarde-Paz contributes a scintillating piece on the interplay of weird fiction and philosophy, while Manuel Arenas and Katherine Kerestman write on the ever-vital vampire motif. David Haden and S. T. Joshi write on the neglected female weird writers Mary Howitt and Everil Worrell. Other essays discuss William Hope Hodgson, H. P. Lovecraft's influence on George R. R. Martin, and other topics.

The issue also contains an array of evocative poetry by such masters of weird verse as Wade German, Frank Coffman, Ann K. Schwader, Ngo Binh Anh Khoa, and others. In all, Penumbra No. 3 provides a rich feast of terror for the scholar and the devotee.